Forum: Bug Report and Feature Requests

Something happens at mdnight

richardshagrin2015-08-25 5:08:34pm

I don't know if its the site or my computer or some interaction between them, but when I am reading a story at or a few minutes after midnight and I need to go to a new chapter my screen freezes often for considerable time (less than an hour but more than 10 minutes) and if I get insistent about clicking on the new chapter, my internet explorer breaks and I need to log in again. I suppose I should go to bed earlier, or when it happens, but is there some other way to fix this without buying a new computer or logging out and logging in again. If this is just my problem, never mind. If it is happening to others and there is something magic or hexed by the midnight hour, perhaps something can be done. I don't know why Midnight Pacific time would matter unless its 2am Central time and something gets refreshed then and isn't available to readers for "a while". If I knew how long "a while" is supposed to be I could take a refreshment break and come back when it is supposed to work again. Thanks for reading, even if it is only my problem.

May or may not be this:
https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/windows/en-US/4a782e40-bbd8-40b7-869d-68e3dfd1a5b4/windows-update-scan-high-memory-usage

I never got around to figuring out if the issue always hit on my system at the same time every day, but it was certainly happening all the time.

Crumbly Writer2015-08-28 7:08:17pm

You may want to examine your background tasks (like scanning for system updates). If they're taking too many resources, you should disable them and do them manually (more likely on older computers).

richardshagrin2015-09-15 9:09:42pmUpdated: 2015-09-15 10:09:15pm

Thank you all. The problem is my system, as it happens when I am open on other sites at midnight. Almost all of the time I am on SOL, but experiment has shown its me, not SOL. Should I delete the topic? I suppose it might happen to someone else so the advice could be useful to them.

Looking at the title of this topic I wondered if I should mention the fruit flies in my kitchen? One of the Marx brothers, not Karl, is quoted (somewhere, need citation) as saying "Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana."
Upon further research the quote is attributed to Anthony Oettinger. Its not what you don't know that hurts. Its what you know that isn't so.

I don't believe you can delete threads, only individual posts. In other words, you can delete your individual post in a thread, but that's it. What's more, even if you did, you'll usually be quoted by other people.

Assuming you are referring to a personal computer rather than a work computer, you can adjust the update settings so that it downloads the updates but doesn't install until you tell it to.

What version of Windows are you running. I have Win 7 Pro and I can configure it to automatically install updates at a time I specify (not instantly when the updates are available. In my case it is set to install updates at 3AM local time.

My personal solution to this kind of problem is that I refuse to let Microsoft screw me up the arse. Windows Update gets turned OFF. I will update when _I_ want to.

This is one of my objections to Win10 b.t.w. First time after install and update I turned my laptop on to do something quickly - and found that MS tied the machine up for 20 minutes solid before I even got to the desktop.

That machine is now running Linux Mint. My desktop is still on Win 7 Ultimate, and I refuse to let Mickeysoft mess with it. I use 3rd party security anyhow.

As used, reconditioned computers get less and less expensive, they will get like toasters. People used to repair them, now they toss them out and switch to the next one. If a used computer is $100 and a new MAC is $3,000, you can get 30 used ones for the same price. If the used one lasts a year, or only six months, you get more years of computer use replacing than buying the best, which will be obsolete in a few (maybe five or six) years. Hard drives have a mean time between failure rate that varies by manufacturer, but no computer lasts forever. Built in obsolescence is not just a Microsoft software invention. The latest, greatest anything isn't for very long. Like new cars, whose value drops 30% once you drive your purchase away from the dealer, new computers may not be your best investment.

As used, reconditioned computers get less and less expensive, they will get like toasters. People used to repair them, now they toss them out and switch to the next one.

That's almost true now for laptops, it will never be true with desktop PCs. Desk top PCs are too modular. It's probably been over a decade since anyone actually tried to repair an individual PC component.

Desktop PC repair is a matter of replacing faulty component rather than the whole machine.

And if your PC is so old you can't get compatible components with the latest tech, Wipe windows off of it and install one of the Linux distributions on it.

Unless you are doing high end gaming, there is no reason why a PC couldn't be kept operational for 15-20 years.

Heck if you have the ingenuity to make things fit in ways they weren't necessarily meant to you could take a 20 year old case, strip it and build a new computer in it from components that is only 1 generation behind for < $500.

If a used computer is $100 and a new MAC is $3,000, you can get 30 used ones for the same price.

You're equating any computer with Windows on it with a Mac. They're not equivalent. No pun intended but you're comparing Apples to Oranges.

A mac at $700 (brand new Mac Mini) is worth more than hundreds of PC boxes to me. It's the software, reliability, peace of mind, and ecosystem that make the difference.

For example, on the Mac, generally, you don't get malware unless you go out of your way and purposely do something spectacularly stupid. And even then, if Apple knows about this malware, then it simply won't run on your Mac.

I've been running on macs for the last 25 year (since 1990) and never had an instance of a file becoming corrupted for example.

Mac's virtual memory system doesn't grind a hard drive into oblivion causing it to fail prematurely.

Do we need to mention the Windows registry? It's a universal failure point for Windows systems and yet even in Windows 10, they still have that piece of crap.

Yeah, Macs are like other computers in that sometime components fail, but your work is orders of magnitude safer than on some windows box, even the expensive ones.

Macs value is most clearly realized by looking at the price of used Macs. Used ones are still generally more expensive that new Windows boxes.

It started out as Windows 7 Family Edition and that is what appears (in French) when I boot up. I am offered different versions of Windows 7 but have not considered them yet.
The problem was that I also had automatic downloads of updates but my laptop is configured to sleep if unbtouched for 5 minutes; hence the messup in the mornings.Just reconfigured it as you suggest. Going to look at the below which was in another thread

Huh! SWMBO bought one of those thingies and we had to go back to the Apple store every week we were in England because it deleted everything and then lost stuff and .... Having started with DOS and 8086s MS doesn't frighten me but when I touch a screen on an apple product it goes up or down too fast to read - SWMBO had to go and buy a device to slow it down, lost that and two more have just arrived! Too complicated and I don'rt have a doctorate in computerese.
The one person I really trusted wouldn't use Apples but for his work construted boards for fairly standard homemade PCs and then connected them somehow to the 660,000v power distribution cables - successfully. You can't do that with a Mac

The one person I really trusted wouldn't use Apples but for his work construted boards for fairly standard homemade PCs and then connected them somehow to the 660,000v power distribution cables - successfully. You can't do that with a Mac

With the right equipment you can connect any computer to any voltage power to use it as either a power source or for sending network signals down or both.

I've used computers since the mid 1970s and every version of MS software since MS-DOS 2 up to Windows 7 on a regular basis. Tried Win 8 and Win 10 and don't like them. Don't like the crappy way Windows go out of their way not to secure the operating system, and out of their way to make software incompatible with other versions. Which is why I use Linux which is based on Unix which is what Mac and all major systems and servers are based on. Unix / Linux / Mac are higher security, faster performing, and use less space and resources than any version of MS Windows since Win 3.11.